October 12, 2014

Rebooted

“For me the engineering challenge of the 21st century is to reboot education, intelligence (decision support), and research simultaneously. How can we create a global “World Brain” and autonomous Internet that can’t be censored or shut down, that puts into any handheld device anywhere the truth about any topic?” — Robert David Steel in “Robert David Steele on OSINT”, IEEE Computer, July 2014.

We will all be borged into this World Brain, I presume, as little brain cells, whether we want to or not. Inclusiveness, is, after all, all about playing along, about obeying the rules and absorbing the culture of our tech overlords; inclusiveness doesn’t welcome (or include) those who don’t buy into the central Vision, I guess.

And "the truth about any topic”? Gawd, whose truth? If there’s anything the internet has done, it’s surely to teach us that there are as many truths as internet communities — as I’ve said endlessly elsewhere, the net is Postmodernism without the twee irony. Robert David Steele seems to be (unironically) pining for an authoritarian Modernism (without the irony).

And that same omnipresent omniscient Giant Brain will be doing its fair share of tracking — without you being able to shut it down or stop it from watching.